I wrote this post January 28th 2008 yet the Qtrax site still does not allow downloads. It says “downloads are coming soon”. I’ve downloaded Qtrax’s client and have it on my system. Which I won’t advise you to do, at this time because downloads are not yet available. However, they claim they are coming so we are all waiting and hoping that some day soon, Qtrax will enable the downloading of free music via their peer to peer network.

Original Story Starts Here:

As Butthead might say, Free music downloads rule. I was surprised and pleased to see this article come across the wire.

Apparently, the music industry has caved into the demands of consumers, powered by technology that makes sharing and transferring files between people and devices a snap, to offer free and unrestricted access to nearly every song available. This time it’s no joke because the music companies have signed on with an organization that has developed a peer to peer network which will earn income through advertising and pay the music companies a fee based on ‘use statistics’. Hopefully, this will trickle down to the musicians who wrote the songs. I knew, the first time that I downloaded a song, this day would come. The ability to search archives, download single tracks, and transfer them from computer to mobile devices, is a technology that is far better than the old system of music distribution. It was obvious to me that the music companies and the
musicians would need to reinvent the way they made money. Being a ‘DeadHead’ (The Grateful Dead allowed recording and encouraged the distribution of their music from shows), I’ve always felt that musicians should make most of their money from performances and not from the copyrights of their songs. I wrote to my senators and congressmen when I first saw the technology in an effort to explain why things would change but copyright protection has been in place for hundreds of years and it took some time (about 7 years) for the reality to sink in with the music industry. This demonstrates and confirms my theory that, legalities can not stand in the way of practicality because the best solution will always become ‘common sense’. BTW, don’t steal that phrase or I’ll sick my copyright attorney on you! No really, I’m not kidding, but I don’t demand money just credit… 🙂

This is the link to the new peer to peer music service. I’m sure there will be other services like this one working to sign deals with the music industry, but hat’s off to Qtrax because they ‘broke the ice’. I will write another post after I have a chance to try out the service and review it.